‘Left, Right & Center’: Obama’s New NSA Plans

Posted on Jan 18, 2014

Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and the other “Left, Right & Center” panelists have a heated discussion about President Obama’s new plans for the National Security Agency.

Scheer agrees with the criticism of the speech from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who gave the president an A for effort and a C for content. National Review editor Rich Lowry, who provides the view from the right, thinks the new plan for metadata just kicks the can down the road and doesn’t change a program that has not seen abuses. Kristen Soltis Anderson (vice president of the Winston Group, who provides another perspective from the right) urges everyone to examine the voting on the Amash Amendment, which seeks to stop the NSA’s blanket surveillance of Americans. She says the speech was meant to shift public opinion, but it’s unclear whether it worked—Pew shows 70 percent of Americans think data being collected winds up being used for other purposes. But public opinion about the program varies widely, according to Politico.com.

Plus, a heated debate over whether the IRS knows more than the NSA does about us. And finally, can anyone stop Hillary?